


No More Stand and Deliver

by Verecunda



Category: Horrible Histories
Genre: AU, Angst, F/M, Genderswap, PWP, excessive amounts of eyeliner
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-12-07
Updated: 2011-12-07
Packaged: 2017-10-27 01:34:17
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,932
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/290193
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Verecunda/pseuds/Verecunda
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"You wouldn't deny a condemned woman her last request, would you, James?"</p>
            </blockquote>





	No More Stand and Deliver

**Author's Note:**

> Disclaimer: I don't own either the _Horrible Histories_ books or TV series.
> 
> Note: I really don't know what this is... should I know?

“Hello, James.”

She stands like one of the shadows that fill the cell beyond the pale pool of moonlight from the window, long and dark against the opposite wall. Beneath the rim of the black hat, her dark-lined eyes gleam like jet in her white face, her smile a knife’s edge.

He never thought it would end like this.

Oh, he knew that _this_ was inevitable, the end she’s come to. But he thought it would be something detached, remote, that one day he would read in one of the gazettes that Richardine Turpin, the most wanted woman in England, had been caught and hanged in some county he’d barely heard of, or shot down by a militia on some distant highway. He never once imagined that he would be the one to deliver her into the law’s hands.

She pushes herself away from the wall and saunters almost lazily over to him, crossing the cell in just a few steps. One eyebrow arches as she regards him.

“Didn’t think I’d see you in here again. Have you come to gloat?”

“No,” he replies at once, his fingers tightening on the brim of his hat as he clutches it in front of him. He has come prepared for every one of her games, every weapon she can use against him.

“ _Oh._ ” It’s soft, just a breath; then she smirks. “Then have you come to see the prisoner? They’ve been paying to get in to see me for _days_ now.”

“Stop it.” His voice is tight, and silently he curses himself. He’d forgotten just how easily she can get under his skin.

She falls abruptly silent, a fleeting expression of surprise crossing her face. Then her eyes narrow dangerously. Every trace of humour drops from her demeanour in an instant, leaving only steel.

“All right, then. Why _are_ you here, Smith?”

He opens his mouth, but despite everything he has rehearsed in his head, everything he had determined to say, no words come. Only now does he realise that there’s just too much. Too many questions he wants to ask, too many things he wants - _needs_ \- to know, too many things that have never been said. But he can’t find the words to begin, doesn’t even know which words are _right_.

How can he tell her of all the days spent wondering where she was, praying against his conscience that she was still alive? How can he tell her of all the nights he has lain awake, torturing himself with images of her in the arms of another man (for she never bothered to conceal from him that she was fucking Samuel Gregory, or - damn him to hell - Matthew King)? Or worse, with thoughts of those nights where she’d come to his door, dark and wild as a storm, those nights she spent arching beneath him, or moving above him, her limbs tangled with his?

How can he tell her that despite every act of cruelty and calculated wickedness, he still loves her?

“You said you didn’t know me.”

It’s out without him thinking about it, sharp and bitter. He’s not sure why that’s what came to him first, but suddenly it’s all he can think about. The courtroom, her voice carefully flat as she denied his testimony even as her eyes seared into him from across the room, her expression one of indignant disbelief, as if _she_ were the one being wronged in all of this. He wants to hate her for the way she can so easily make him feel this, the sinking shame of a traitor, a coward. But he’s wanted to hate her many times before now, and never managed.

“You told them who I was,” she counters, and in her eyes he sees a flash of that anger he knows so well. And as always, he’s not sure if that anger is for him, or for the world at large. “You betrayed me.”

The words stab, as they’re meant to, but he tries to withstand it, grasping desperately at something resembling common sense.

“I had to,” he says, hating how pathetic his words sound even to his own ears. “You’re a criminal.”

Once, long ago, he tried to hold onto all those words - _criminal, thief, murderess_ \- as if they could somehow destroy his feelings for her. But he knows now that whatever she has done, whatever anyone else may call her, to him she will always simply be Dick ( _Dick_ , not Richardine; she always hated her full name).

Nor can he deny that, in some twisted way, she’s right. He did betray her. He remembers the feeling of treachery closing around him as he faced her that first time after he arrived in York. It had occurred to him even then, in one moment of madness, that there was still time to bow out, to tell them that he must have made a mistake, that the woman calling herself Joanna Palmer wasn’t Dick Turpin after all.

But he hadn’t. He has always been honest, for better or for worse. And, the rational part of him insists, it doesn’t matter what they might have had once; it doesn’t change what she is.

She’s smiling again. “Why, so I am. A criminal, just as you say.”

The nonchalance of her tone frays at his nerves, and he replies angrily, “You needn’t sound so proud of yourself, Dick. The things you’ve done... it’s just wickedness, all of it.”

She shrugs. “My wickedness is all I have. I have to be proud of it.”

“You don’t.” They’ve had this same conversation, countless times before. All of a sudden he remembers his love, lying beneath his anger, and he forges on, “It’s not too late, you know. You could send for a priest -”

But she cuts him off with a theatric groan. “Oh, _God_. You sound just like my father. He wrote me a letter, _bleating_ at me to seek absolution. But I could confess to every priest in England and it still wouldn’t change where I’m going.” She falls silent for a moment, face becoming pensive. “I expect I’ll see Matthew again down there.” She heaves a sigh - impossible to tell if it’s sincere or not. “Poor Matthew.”

Just the mention of the man sets his teeth on edge, and he feels the old, roiling jealousy as he grinds out, “I didn’t come here to talk about Matthew King.”

Her brows fly up, and she smirks at him, the quirk of her mouth knowing. She takes another step, now chest-to-chest with him, and he feels the familiar pull of her presence on his senses. One slender hand comes up to rest lightly on his chest.

“What is it, James? Are you still angry about what I said in the courtroom? What did you want me to say? Did you want me to stand up and profess my undying love for you to all the world, is that what this is all about?”

His heart clenches painfully. “Dick -”

And just like that, she draws her hand away as if scorched. “Couldn’t do that. I had an alibi to uphold, you know.”

He frowns. As always, it’s as if there’s something more to her words. But no matter how closely he regards her, her face betrays nothing. She simply smiles in her maddening way and steps away from him, just out of arm’s reach. Then:

“You should be in for a good reward.” Her voice is nonchalant, careless. “It was two hundred pounds last I heard.”

He shrugs uncomfortably. He doesn’t want to talk about King, but he doesn’t want to be talking about _this_ , either. He’s been trying his hardest _not_ to think about it ever since they reminded him of the reward. He supposes, in some distant, logical way, that he’s done a good thing by turning her in; but looking at her - _Dick_ , the girl he grew up with, the woman he fell in love with - he just can’t feel it.

She looks up suddenly, eyes stern under her lashes. “I hope you don’t intend to do anything stupid, like refusing the money.” Damn her. Years apart, and she can still read him like a book. “One of us should benefit from this sorry mess, at least.” She gives a short laugh, laced with so much bitterness that he has to keep himself from flinching. “Stitched up by a postie. The _humiliation_.” Then her mood changes, quicksilver, and she flashes him a smile. “It must’ve been fate that you got to see my letter.”

“Maybe,” he says, trying to keep his voice mild, but the same thought has occurred to him, more than once, since the moment he first picked up that damned letter, looked down at it... then looked again.

There was no question that it was her hand. He knows it as well as he knows his own. It had been her father’s idea that he should teach her - a last-ditch, despairing attempt to improve her prospects after she’d been unable to hold to any sort of honest work due to her temper and sheer bloody-mindedness - but he’d agreed eagerly. He was her oldest friend - her _only_ friend - and he’d loved her even then, and was all too happy to have any excuse to spend more time with her.

He remembers the lessons in the back room of the post office - he had just become a postman then - as he’d endured her frustrated rages and attempts to goad him into argument as he’d always endured them. Until that day, when she’d been struggling with something - he hardly remembers what now - and he’d reached over to guide her hand. His fingers had brushed hers, and she’d looked up, her dark eyes meeting his with a dangerous spark of knowledge, then she’d leaned in and caught his unresisting mouth with her own... and the lesson had been quickly forgotten. After that it had become something of a game to her, to see how long she could endure the drudgery of practising handwriting before seducing him to distraction. And he’d been only too happy to go along with it. Looking back, it’s a wonder she ever learned anything at all.

She smiles at him, the same half-lidded, knowing smile she gave him that day. No doubt she knows exactly what he’s thinking of. Maybe, just maybe, she’s thinking of it, too.

“Really, you shouldn’t look so damn glum,” she says lightly. “You’ve done a good deed and put away a dangerous criminal. You should be proud of yourself.”

“ _Stop_ ,” he says again. “Just... stop, Dick. I don’t want to talk about it.”

She huffs. “You don’t want to talk about what a good deed you’ve done, you don’t want to talk about King... well, what _do_ you want to talk about, James? Why did you come?”

That question again. The one he still doesn’t know how to answer. A lifetime’s worth of uncertainty and anger and love and desperation storms through him, so fierce that he has to close his eyes against it. And when he opens them...

“Just tell me why.”

She frowns. “‘Why’?”

“Why you did it - the robberies, the... murders, all of it. If nothing else, tell me that at least.”

For the first time since he entered her cell tonight, he’s caught her off-guard. Her frown deepens, her whole face darkening, her attention turning somewhere deep inwards, and he sees something lurking there in her eyes. But before he can see what it is, she smoothes over it with another shrug.

“You know why.”

“I don’t.”

“Of course you do. I couldn’t hold down any _normal_ jobs. I didn’t _want_ to hold them down. You know that. There wasn’t much left for me after that, and I wouldn’t have done well as a whore.” Then she smiles, cold and precise. “Or as a postmaster’s wife.”

He does not - _cannot_ \- reply to that.

“There,” she says, with a grin. “Now you know. Anything else?”

This is it. They’ve come to the end. And all he can say, when he finally finds his voice, is, “No.”

 _No_ , despite the years they’ve known each other, everything that has said, or not been said, everything that has ever passed between them.

He’s not sure what to do now, whether it’s time for him to call it off, to turn and shout for the gaoler to let him out so he can leave with what little of his dignity she hasn’t gleefully ripped to shreds.

But before he can do anything, say anything, she exclaims, “Thank fuck for that!” And suddenly, with a deft flick of her wrist, she whips off her hat and tosses it carelessly aside. Her eyes meet his, deliberately, and the black lines around them lend her gaze an extra audacity as she smirks at him. And then, she reaches behind and unties the ribbon holding her hair back, shaking her head and sending the black curls falling to her shoulders.

At once, his mouth goes dry. He knows that gesture well.

“Dick -” Her name comes thickly to his tongue as he claws at sense. “Dick, what are you doing?”

She scoffs. “What does it look like? I want you to fuck me.”

Dear God. At those words, the blood seems to leave his head and rush straight to his groin. His heart pounds against his ribs, and his palms prickle with sweat.

Through the blinding rush of desire, he makes one last futile grasp at common sense. “ _Dick..._ ”

“Consider it my last request.” She bares her teeth, white and gleaming in the wan light. “You wouldn’t deny a condemned woman her last request, would you, James?”

And that does for him completely. Her fingers are at his cravat; they tangle and tug, and it unravels - and the last of his control with it. He drops his hat and seizes her by the waist and pulls her against him, roughly, and brings his mouth down hard on hers, his hands instinctively seeking out the curves belied by the too-large men’s garments she wears. One hand comes up, closing over one breast beneath the shirt, his thumb dragging the linen across the taut nipple. She gives a sharp noise - half gasp, half moan - and tilts her head to move her mouth against his with equal ferocity. The kiss is hot and wet and deep, and his eyes have just fallen shut, his brain just sinking into bliss... when suddenly she bites him, sharp as an adder, and he’s instantly brought back to his senses. There’s a flash of pain, a taste of blood, and he growls, deep in his throat, as a brutal flare of lust burns the last of his misgivings away.

His hand steals up, tangles in those dark curls - and pulls. She gives _that_ gasp, the one he remembers, a high, ecstatic thing, and when he looks down at her he sees the flush rising in her pale cheeks, the wild glitter of her dark eyes.

The next thing he knows, he’s crowding her back against the damp stone wall of the cell, their hands pulling at garments, his mouth on hers once more. Her breath is hot and her tongue as wicked as ever as it moves against his own, and _God_ , he’s unbearably hard. Four years, four years, and no memory, no matter how vivid, can compare with the reality of kissing her.

He loosens the lace at her throat, and lays his mouth over the long column of her neck, feeling her blood thrumming beneath the skin, warm and vital. She moans, her hands clutching at his hair, and shrugs to let the oversized shirt slip over her shoulder. He can’t resist lowering his mouth to it, smoothing kisses over the pale curve before suddenly digging his teeth into it, tasting the salt of her skin. At once, her moan turns into a cry, her hips arching towards his.

In the same moment, she succeeds in unbuttoning his jacket and freeing his shirt from his breeches. Her hands are cold, and he hisses as they slip beneath the rough muslin and trail across his belly. By contrast, the chuckle she gives against his ear is hot - an instant before her teeth close around his earlobe and _tug_.

He sucks in a breath. “In God’s name, Dick-!”

But he gets no further, coherent thought scattering in the face of his desire. Instead he grasps her shoulders, hard enough to bruise, and attempts to back her towards the small bunk, but she shakes her head, black curls flying.

“Not the bed,” she says, and even she sounds breathless now, her chest heaving beneath her shirt. “ _Here._ Against the wall.”

All right, then. They’ve fucked against walls often enough in the past: hurried trysts in the post office, or in the stable of her father’s inn-yard. He pins her to the wall with the weight of his body, feeling a hot flare of satisfaction at the shudder that passes through her body. It’s hard to do anything with her hands all over his torso, but somehow, _somehow_ , he manages to undo her riding-breeches. He slips one hand inside, between her legs, and he groans as he finds her already hot and wet. She moans sharply, her fingers digging hard into his skin as he strokes her - once, twice - then she pulls her hands from beneath his shirt to pull furiously at his own breeches.

“No time for all that,” she mutters. “I want you to fuck me _now_.”

He feels a strange heaviness at her words, but there’s no time to dwell on that as she pulls down his breeches, and he feels the cold air of the cell burn against his cock. It aches urgently, and he quickly finds himself agreeing with her. _No time._

Another kiss, deep and hard, and he lifts her easily - it’s too easy to forget just how little of her there really is - her slender legs coming up to capture his hips and drag him in even closer to her. His cock rubs against her, briefly, before he moves his hips, and in the next instant he’s buried deep inside her. His whole body tenses and he bites down on a curse. She, however, has no such inhibitions; she throws her head back against the wall and cries out so loudly it’s a wonder every gaoler in the castle doesn’t come running.

There’s no time to tease or draw out their pleasure. Instead he simply affirms his grasp around her waist and thrusts up into her, again and again, so hard that each one tears a gasp from his throat and has his hips and back aching. Nor does she give him any quarter, clenching around him so tightly it’s nothing short of sinful. Her hands steal back under his shirt and her nails rake his back, and she presses her mouth against his as if she means to taste every groan of mingled pain and pleasure that she wrings from him.

“ _Oh_... oh, _yes_ , James...” she breathes brokenly against his lips. “ _This_ is what I’ve missed... _yes_.”

He’s too tense, too highly-strung, and too burdened by a doom-laden sense of urgency, to last long. All too soon he feels his whole body seize up, his hips giving one last thrust as his pleasure drives him to the very edge - and then straight over it. He comes with a half-strangled cry which he doesn’t quite manage to muffle in her hair, and she’s right there alongside him, her whole body tightening around him, inside and out, as she gives one long, raucous cry. In the next moment, his strength gives out and he’s forced to let her down, sliding down the wall with his arms still around her.

He’s not sure how long they stay like that, pressed against each other as they cling and pant for breath, laying sated kisses against parted lips. His heart is galloping, and he can feel the erratic movement of her chest against his own. His anger has burnt out along with his lust, leaving only a strange, hopeless softness behind, and he even smiles ruefully as he raises a hand to stroke her hair.

As if galled into action by that gesture, she stirs and twists out of his arms, righting her clothes before fumbling for her hat. With a heavy sigh, he gets dressed himself, trying to compose himself and gather his scattered wits, hoping that when he walks out of here - as he eventually must - it won’t be _too_ glaringly obvious what they’ve done.

She dons her hat at its usual angle, then pauses suddenly, looking out of the window. “It’ll be dawn soon,” she remarks. He glances at her, frowning as he tries to determine her tone; but then she turns to him, and she’s smiling that familiar impenetrable smile. “You’ll be there, obviously.”

“I...” He trails away, the remembrance of what’s coming sending a sudden wave of sickness through him.

Her eyes glint sharply. “So you’ll send me to the gallows, but you can’t bear to be there to watch me on them? That’s pretty poor.”

Once again, he doesn’t know what to say. Despite the fact that he’s just fucked her against the wall, he still feels the familiar instinct to save the remnants of his dignity at all cost. He can’t bear the thought of giving her anything more to mock him with now, but at the same time, he can’t bear to think of letting her go to her death without letting her know _somehow_...

“I don’t want you to die.”

He says it, stark and simple, looking at her, willing her to give some sign that she understands...

She just snorts. “Should’ve thought of that before you went running to the JPs, shouldn’t you?”

He opens his mouth to reply, but before he can say a word, there’s a heavy footfall in the passage outside, a jangle of keys and the rasp of a lock, and with a groan, the heavy door of the cell swings open and the gaoler is standing there in the doorway.

“Time’s up, Mr. Smith.”

 _No._ His heart leaps into his throat, and he’s not _ready_ to leave, but Dick looks at him and says, in a mockery of the man’s formal tone, “Goodbye, _Mr. Smith_. Thank you for visiting.”

He wants to see her face, but she’s turned away, and all he can see is her profile through the veil of her black hair.

“Pray for me, James,” she says suddenly, and she meets his eyes. “That’s what decent people do, isn’t it?”

And there’s nothing he can do. Nothing he can do but nod and let himself be ushered from the cell and out into the passageway. But even then he turns, desperate for one last look at her, seeing her framed in the doorway. She’s limned on one side by the light of the setting moon, the rest of her plunged into darkness, and her eyes stare back at him as they always have, large and dark and wild.

Damn dignity. He needs to know.

“One more thing, Dick. Just one more,” he says, quickly, as the gaoler puts his hand on the door. “Did you love me, too?”

For a fraction of a second her expression is utterly unreadable. Then she starts to her laugh, a low, dark chuckle that raises the hairs at his nape.

“Oh, James. What do _you_ think?”

Then the door slams shut with a terrible finality, and she’s lost to him forever.


End file.
